Sourcing In Germany: You Might Get Sued

While some people claim that the Swiss are too careless when it comes to labor law and data protection, I think that the Germans tend to go over the top. Just ask Google and Facebook, their legal advisors must be making a fortune!

But nonetheless, I really like Nina’s article. If you understand German, you really should read her post. Otherwise here are the main points:

like in most countries, most German companies have a hard time filling some positions

Employer Branding sounds good, but sometimes it’s still not enough in order to “bait” potential future employees

Direct Sourcing looks like a good solution. And if it doesn’t work immediately, staying in touch might be an option

What about Data Protection? Worst case potential candidates might sue you for damages. But why should they? After all, it’s cool if somebody contacts you. Who doesn’t want to feel in demand? But if you get spammed several dozens of times per week by wannabe direct sourcers, this can get really, REALLY annoying.

Or a rival company could sue you for disloyal competition if you “poach” one of their employees (here’s the ugly word again). And finally, what about the damage to a company’s reputation if the media starts talking about your organization in relation to the P-word?

I love this article because it starts with understanding the needs of recruiters/sourcers, adopts the usual careful approach of a lawyer with some warnings, explains the legal situation and options in a way that even I could understand (at least I think so…) and then makes you want to read part 2

Pinterest For Recruiting

Raminta Kaleinikaite (check her out on LinkedIn), one of the great people working at Joberate, published an excellent Prezi presentation about Pinterest’s potential for recruitment.

And yes, once again I feel the need to add the usual disclaimer that I tend to qualify many things as cool, awesome, fantastic, excellent, etc. But would I write about things that I’m not truly passionate about? I’ll let you be the judge of it

I’ll link to the prezi in a minute, but in order to close this article’s circle about international (and non-English) stuff, Christoph Athanas (@CAthanas) wrote about and even highly recommended Raminta’s presentation on his blog MetaHR.de.

And linking back (literally, not as in “a href”) to the virtual vs real-life topic and my previously mentioned CERN bubble, I informed Raminta on Twitter about Christoph’s article.

I thought this was really cool, because after being “virtually” in touch with Christoph for some time, I finally met him at last year’s #SMRC in Zurich and I also had the chance to meet Raminta “IRL” at #TruLondon in March.

And here’s the prezi:

Dirty IKEA Furniture

And now for the big finish of this edition of Shiny Web Stuff: IKEA’s table sex!

It’s actually quite simple:

A Swiss guy called Kevin Kyburz (Stephen Colbert would probably say: “If that’s his real name”) posted an innocent (well, sort of…) tweet to the IKEA Switzerland Twitter account. Okay, he admits that he might have been a bit intoxicated when he came up with the tweet and, maybe even worse, had been browsing the IKEA website beforehand.

So before we get to the really juicy stuff (we’re almost there), imagine how the Marketing and/or Legal department at your company might react to this…

The tweet that started it all said:

I just saw that the IKEA desk can only sustain 50 kg, where should the other 20 kg go while humping?

Okay, I admit that I don’t really know how to translate “voegeln”, but “humping” sounded a bit less dirty than “shagging”. The original tweet in German said:

The really cool thing is that IKEA (@IKEA_CH) didn’t only reply, but they totally played along!

They replied by saying that they didn’t know Kevin’s partner, but that they could provide tables supporting up to 80 kg. Of course, Kevin checked the IKEA website, complained about the price for such a table, then IKEA argued that such a table provided workspaces for up to four people, then they got into a discussion about multiple girlfriends, the need for additional bedroom furniture in order to accommodate them all, a little misunderstanding, a request for a quote (implied: with discount). And so on…